Il6 THE FATE-OF MAN
abnormal forms which smother true cultural
creativeness. Thus there is realized the ideal
of collective, truly national culture of which
some of the thinkers at the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth
dreamed, Richard Wagner in Germany, and in
Russia, V. Ivanoff and the symbolists. Thus
culture is cleansed of individualism.
The end of the Renaissance is approaching,
as I have said so many times. Is there any truth
or justification in this process? Can its results
be justly compared with the old liberalism and
individualism? I believe there is much good
in the new, and that the old liberalism and
individualism are outworn and decadent. It is
right to consider cultural creativeness as the
service of a super-personal ideal. The egoism
of an intellectual class cannot be justified, and
the idea of service has almost disappeared in
the renaissance-liberal era. But the idea of
serving a super-personal purpose is not opposed
to freedom of the spirit, to creative liberty. On
the contrary, it is realizable only by means of
this freedom. Creative service is voluntary:
it cannot be put into a compulsory service
like the army. A dictatorship over the spirit
abolishes creative liberty and corrupts the cul-
turally creative. It demands treason to their
ideals, inclines them to servility and under threat
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